Farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia

The pollen comes down in thick and lazy drifts from the pine trees. An unabashed yellow from a Third World preschool. A dull, pasty yellow that clings to everything. I find it on the door knob to the rusty marina bathroom, staining the dog's paws, swirling in puddles after storms, and stealthily topping each layer of paint I apply to the boat. We are unpacking and repacking: taking all our things out, and laying them one by one along the dock to sift through, even as the pines let down their bright dust, slowly and incrementally, to yellow the ground and all our earthly possessions.

It is April, and next week, as we set sail in our 26 foot sloop named Julep, we follow the spring up the coast. It is April, and it is Easter and it is the second anniversary of my little sister's death. When we leave, I will scatter some of her ashes here too, another place I have lived where I have loved and missed her.

We have readied for our voyage by bringing Julep around to a long pier out on the Severn River. Down the pier, where our friends run a boat carpentry operation and informal cat rehabilitation center, all is still. The earth is so flat that a topography of birds emerges. Little flighty bug eaters stalk and skim along the shortcut marsh grasses; crows flap past and into the trees; gulls, vultures and osprey send down shadows at this land's end. Out on the river, it is scarcely ever still, and we are kept up most of the night by the wild rocking of our little home and the ceaseless whine of the bumpers protecting the hull. 

Our days are blurry and shifting, chicken scratch lists on paper and orange violet moods: the thrill of imminent departure and the weight of a thousand chores.

We came to the Chesapeake in December with promises of work and a winter sail. Julep, a Maine-born vessel, had been languishing here for years. We arrived during the run up to Christmas, to a boat suffering the beginnings of mildew and rot, to a season of little work and we watched our trip funds dwindle and in February we came to terms with this being our winter destination. And so we made do with bloody marys on Sundays and slow cooked dinners and lately with the brilliant forest tapestries of flowering trees.

But this is a farewell song.  We've come to take Julep home. To return to our land of plenty.

Farewell Virginia, I see you in your closeup, I do not see you at all. 

My eyes are trained on northern nautical miles, on near and distant lands that do not bear your name. 

Farewell again, to my bright love, my fairy girl. 
Let us meet again someday on that warm and distant shore.

 

To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning

Easter Day of 2010 sparkled with promise. I felt the corners of Life edge towards me amidst the dappled green of the lawn at my family gathering. The day was sun-drenched and airy, soft and forgiving.


Just a few hours later, the police found my sister. Now the brilliance of those last holiday moments come back to me in a crazed sort of whisper.


The day after Easter found me speeding to Massachusetts, to the house where we grew up. I arrived mid-day to rooms thick with casserole-bearing neighbors and the smell of their  funeral food, laced with grief and pity.

What I want to say has to do with losing a part of yourself that perhaps never belonged to you at all, of the little waves of horror that take hold of a life, rupturing it anew again and again in the weeks and months after suicide.

How the person you loved, who breathed into your hair and giggled on the phone and kicked into the surf beside you vanishes and you are left with remnants of her likes and dislikes, of her quirks. And it feels like failure, not to be able to receive her in your dreams, not to feel her somehow beside you. There are no messages from Nora from beyond the grave, cryptic or otherwise.

What I want to say has to do with escape and maybe even redemption.


I came to Maine, adrift, on a gloomy day, to camp with my mother for a week on a mostly uninhabited island in Penobscot Bay. And slowly I was enveloped by the ripple of the tides, the crackle of the driftwood bonfires. Sheltered by the wide dark heavens, I found an island boy from my past, walked right up to him and then just never really walked away again. 


It is exactly one year ago this week that I returned for a moment to my city life to pack up a tiny rented room in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 


One year ago this week I started over on an island in Maine. Nora and I had come here together as children. It was our very own repository of myth and magic. Maybe the only place for me now.


The Maine State Ferry Service runs six boats a day from the Mid-Coast out to sea. Last September found me hobbling aboard the last boat of the day. I arrived with a half dozen boxes, on an ankle I sprained in my late summer NY packing frenzy. Fifteen miles separate America and these Penobscot Bay islands. From harbor to harbor, between departure and arrival, the ocean settles into herself, unfurling lazily alongside the ship's hypnotic drone and the constant churn and fizz of the displaced Atlantic.


On the other side: a new boyfriend, a new (old) dog, and our attic apartment in the town's old yellow schoolhouse.


Before I came here, I worked as an administrator at an evening English school in Chinatown. I served cocktails in the trendy part of Brooklyn. I went to secret parties on my monthly Metro Card. I arrived at crowded tables in cafes and imparted quick kisses on each cheek. I fell asleep on 5 a.m. trains, on my way home from work and barhopping.


This year, I learned how to operate a tractor. I navigated a skiff alone through thick banks of fog and then piloted a 70 foot, 102 year-old industrial ship across the bay. I can still barely drive a car. I am stronger than when I came. My hands are tougher and my nails are dirty and stubby. My hair is tangled and frayed. I've spent time around gasoline and grease, engines and compost and fertilizer and good thick black earth.


It's quiet here, mostly. Lush and still and ever-shifting. Here I found love again. Here I found a certain peace of mind.

And now I am leaving...